Archive for December, 2009

I found the November issue quite stimulating. In particular the opening letter to the editor by Lt. Col. Ken Beebe and short commentary by the usually historically astute William Owens [“The war …

Where joint doctrine fails

There is increasing awareness within the Defense Department that wars are interactively complex or “wicked” problems. A series of new publications and ongoing doctrinal revisions reveals a growing …

Technically speaking, UAVs, guided missiles, torpedoes and unmanned submarines are robots. There are about 50 countries that have or are developing military robots. Many have chemical, temperature and radiation sensors, some are …

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in April that he was canceling the vehicle part of the Future Combat Systems program, he pledged to protect FCS vehicle money so that it would …

TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA for a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that did what his West Point Afghanistan speech failed to do: Show the spine of a commander in chief. Right at …

America’s military is overdue for a dramatic overhaul

The U.S. military, if it is to measure up to its future responsibilities as an effective instrument of statecraft and a trusted institution of …

Battlefield robots raise ethical issues for military

The 7-foot-7-inch humanoid robot in the 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” foreshadowed the ethical concerns facing developers of robots for the Defense …

What the next combat vehicle should look like

The Army leadership will soon restart its stillborn effort to develop and produce a new family of fighting vehicles. More is at stake than …

Industrial base consequences of defense strategy choices

“If one examines U.S. national security or defense strategy documents, or the last three Quadrennial Defense Reviews (QDRs), there is almost no mention of the …

TO THE PENTAGON for its new fixation on fixed-price contracts. DoD is quite right to focus on reining in preposterously out-of-control weapons programs that end up costing millions of dollars more than …